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A Taoist Study of Magic in the Earthsea Cycle religions Article A Taoist Study of Magic in The Earthsea Cycle Yini Huang and Hongbin Dai * College of Foreign Languages and Cultures, Xiamen University, Xiamen 361005, China; [email protected] * Correspondence: [email protected] Abstract: The Earthsea Cycle by Ursula. K. Le Guin is a fantasy work in Western literature that shines with ostentatiously idiosyncratic sparks of Taoist philosophies. Resorting to Taoism (also translated as Daoism) and its representative work Tao Te Ching, this article aims at exploring the Earthsea magic, a ubiquitous motif in fantasy, with Taoist thoughts and theories including the law of relativity, harmonious dialectics, and equilibrium. This article reconstructs the magical Earthsea world within a Taoist framework and reveals the Taoist connotations of magic. Finally, this article concludes that, radically distinct from its traditional image, magic in Earthsea serves to heal the physical, mental, and spiritual wound of separation; set up harmony of the opposites in binaries; and preserve the delicate equilibrium insusceptible to the ravages of time. Magic in The Earthsea Cycle works miracles in a Taoist manner. Keywords: The Earthsea Cycle; Taoism; Ursula K. Le Guin; magic; harmonious dialectics 1. Introduction Deriving “from the Greek term magoi” but remaining as a fluid construct (Gilbert et al. 2016), magic and magical practices, which permeated the worldly life of men dating back Citation: Huang, Yini, and Hongbin to ancient Greece and Rome, readily accessible to be “employed for the most mundane Dai. 2021. A Taoist Study of Magic in ends” (Bailey 2007, p. 10), have seemingly been the subjects of the perpetual infatuation of The Earthsea Cycle. Religions 12: 144. men ever since. Magic being a vital dimension of fantasy, Ursula K. Le Guin, who states https://doi.org/10.3390/rel12030144 that she has been a Taoist ever since she learned what the refreshing and empowering idea was (Peterson 2016), does not hesitate to adopt it with a hue of Taoist thoughts. Academic Editor: Marina Montesano Therefore, similar to Tao, magic and nature in The Earthsea Cycle is as pristine and infinite as time itself. Before the age of Enlightenment, magic, thinly veiled with a religious aura, Received: 25 January 2021 was respected and feared by human beings far more than any type of natural disaster, Accepted: 20 February 2021 wild animal, or adversary army from an adjacent country. In contemporary society, even Published: 24 February 2021 with the rapid development of science, the sophisticated maturity of technology, and the ubiquitous prevalence of skepticism, people’s passion for and curiosity about magic in no Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral sense decreased or faded. with regard to jurisdictional claims in A corresponding Taoist interpretation is called for to probe into such a motley yet published maps and institutional affil- representative collection of East Asian philosophies in the Earthsea magic. In The Earthsea iations. Cycle, magic is drastically different from its stereotypes, which describe it as a fascinating tool with dazzling spells to destroy the enemy or overcome the evil. On the contrary, magic plays an indispensable and fundamental role in sustaining the normal function of nature in the Earthsea world, for it is not only the starting point of the protagonists’ adventurous Copyright: © 2021 by the authors. journeys of self-revelation and the essential connection between human beings and nature, Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. but also the most efficient and effective tool to end the reign of dark power. This article is an open access article In The Earthsea Cycle, it is not unexpected that magic encompasses the common distributed under the terms and elements of casting a spell, transforming an object, and creating natural forces. However, conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// Earthsea magic extends beyond these conventional practices and builds its essence upon creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ Taoist philosophy. The magical spell of Earthsea is Old Speech, the true name of all 4.0/). things. Apart from mastering the aforementioned magical tricks, Earthsea magic lays Religions 2021, 12, 144. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel12030144 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/religions Religions 2021, 12, 144 2 of 13 tremendous emphasis on the moral rules and ethical boundaries that govern its own application. Therefore, magic essentially compels all wizards to think about the cause– effect relationship in magic and the balanced operation of the world before any action is taken. That is why the Master Hand tells Ged that “you must not change one thing, one pebble, one grain of sand, until you know what good and evil will follow on the act” (Le Guin 2012, p. 51). A wizard’s power of changing and summoning through magic should be wielded with prudence as it has a bearing on all existence, either direct or indirect, in a way reminiscent to the Taoist concept of harmony and equilibrium. Basing itself on Le Guin’s depiction of magic and interpretation of Taoist philosophies related to nature in her stories, this article refers to magic as the starting point and ana- lyzes magic as the fundamental pillar and solid foundation for constructing the Earthsea world with harmonious dialectics of positive and negative elements in the Taoist struc- ture. Moreover, this article also demonstrates how, by applying magic from the Taoist perspective, Le Guin succeeds in maintaining and eventually transcending equilibrium in the Earthsea world. To understand the essence of magic in Earthsea, a reconstruction of the magical Earthsea will lay a thought-provocative foundation, and the salient Taoist attributes of the magical Earthsea world must first be analyzed. According to Taoism, “Tao is without beginning, without end. The material things are born and die, and no credit is taken for their development. Emptiness and fullness alternate, and their relations are not fixed” (Laotse 2012, chp. 40 “The Principle of Reversion,” p. 561). Chuangtse holds the view that death is the biggest inevitable and essential issue open to change in life, which sheds light on the homogeneity between them. The life without the changing element injected by the occurrence of death is but dead stillness with no rays of hope. In addition, Chuangtse also attaches tremendous importance to the circulating nature of the relationship between life and death so that “the succession of growth and decay, of increase and diminution, goes in a cycle, each end becoming a new beginning” (Lin 2012, p. 563). Life and death of all things in the universe are inevitable, since they function in a way similar to that of the eternity of the alternation between night and day that is in accordance with nature’s law. In the Earthsea world, the view regarding life and death as two opposite ends of the same thing, and the same cycle is drawn from statements about “the theory of cycles and universal reversion to opposites” (Laotse 2012, chp. 2 “The Rise of Relative Opposites,” p. 49). To be more exact, according to Taoism, such relationships between the two opposite ends do not exist simply in those of life and death but in all other things as well. Thus, “one might as well talk of the existence of Heaven without that of Earth, or of the negative princi- ple without the positive, which is clearly impossible” (Lin 2012, p. 57). The existence itself asks for the union of two opposite ends or elements to achieve the wholeness, regardless of it being life and death, the world and nether, light and dark, or any other pairs of opposite elements that can be found in the infinite universe. Accordingly, in Wizard of Earthsea, learning magic does not lead Ged to become a potent hero with glorious deeds of defeating the unspeakable and despicable evil lord. Contrastingly, the dark shadow Ged hunts is actually the other half of himself that completes Ged as a whole person. Thus, a fresh understanding of the magical Earthsea world can be traced back to the Taoist philosophy. Magic, which is not an unfamiliar element in different literary works of the fantasy genre, is given a fresh definition in The Earthsea Cycle in Taoist terms distinct from the ones in other magic-grounded worlds. A research into both the recorded history of literature and social developments demonstrates that magic, or witchcraft and sorcery in other contextual situations, has been regarded as a superstitious art performed serving a specific purpose especially in the political and religious power-struggle hierarchy. For instance, the participants in Boxer Rebellion in 20th-century China believed in magical entities that could turn a Chinese person Achillean (Zhao 2013), while in modern South Africa, magic is employed to cast a curse upon the victim, near whose house a concoction of graveyard earth and a magical potion is placed (Ashforth 2005, pp. 139–41). There seems to be “something vaguely disreputable and distasteful about their acts” (Bailey 2007, p. 10). In The Earthsea Religions 2021, 12, 144 3 of 13 Cycle, however, Le Guin robs magic of its feature as an agent of power and desire. Instead, magic is painted with philosophical serenity, thus becoming the indispensable connection between human beings and all other existences, which are closely entwined with each other to delicately sustain the normal operation of the world in equilibrium. In The Earthsea Cycle, Le Guin’s depiction of magic is heavily influenced by Taoist philosophy, which holds the view that the seemingly paradoxical, opposite yet compatible pairing relationship can be found in all things. More specifically, what is beyond the superficial opposite relationship among all things is how the pair of two opposite elements are inevitably interdependent and mutually transformable at the same time. In Le Guin’s Lao Tzu Tao Te Ching—A Book About The Way And The Power Of The Way, her rendition of the original text, expressions such as “Being and nothing; Arise together” (Le Guin 1998, chp.
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